|
Susan Howatch (July 14, 1940-) is an author. She is mainly known for writing Family saga-type novels which follow related characters over large amounts of time. For the last twenty years, her books have tended to have religious themes. Susan Howatch was born in Surrey, England, and went to school at Sutton High School. She obtained a degree in law from the King's College London in 1961. She emigrated to the United States in 1964, where she married and began her career as a writer. She left the United States in 1975 and separated from her husband. She lived for a while in the Republic of Ireland before moving to England in 1980. Her first novel was The Dark Shore, published in 1965. There followed several other gothic novels before she published the first of her family sagas Penmarric (1971), which tells of the fortunes and disputes of Cornish Penmar family in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly over which branch of the family controls the mansion of Penmarric. The family fortune was made in the Cornish tin mining industry, which is discussed throughout one of the six parts, each with a different character as narrator. As made clear by the chapter headings, the fortunes of the family closely parallel the Plantagenet family, including Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, with the mansion representing the throne.
|
